The Paris Diversion (Kate Moore, #2)

by Chris Pavone

8:44 A.M.

This novel is inspired largely by my experiences living just blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11: the confusion and uncertainty during the event, the normal lives interrupted and ended, the long-term aftermath during which we never stopped expecting the next attack: here it is, right now. This chapter begins at 8:44, and its action is meant to last 2 minutes; 8:46 was when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

These days, sirens could mean anything.

When I visited Paris in 2016, I was immediately struck by how similar this terror-sieged city was to New York in the fall of 2001. This gave me the idea to set a 9/11-inspired novel not in New York but in Paris, which is also where we last saw Kate Moore at the end of THE EXPATS.

This is how a police state happens, isn’t it?

Sometimes I’m seized by the horrible fear that we’re living in a reprise of the 1930s, refusing to see the rise of fascism all around us, ignoring the inevitable consequences. I do hope I’m wrong. But hope is not nearly enough. So here I am, sounding my own little alarm.

Hunter Forsyth

Naming characters is not something I do casually. As readers, we see characters’ names again and again and again, we hear these sounds in our brains all throughout the narrative, we associate them with words, with ideas. So I think names are an opportunity to establish associations and expectations, to make readers feel something about the characters. For example, Hunter—at birth this person was saddled with this title, something he’d announce to every stranger he’ll ever meet: I’m a man who hunts. And Forsythe—a person who has every confidence in his own foresight, who couldn't imagine that he could be wrong about his anticipatation of the future.

He’s ignoring the spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower in favor of the ordinary little screen in his palm,

I’ve been skeptical of smart phones and social media from the get-go, and with each passing year I worry more about how these technologies have damaged the way we interact with the one another, how we participate in the world. That’s one of the themes of this book, and not just in the fly-by commentary such as in this passage, but as a central plot element. We now rely so heavily on tech that we’ve made it inevitable for bad actors to exploit our dependencies for nefarious ends.

“What would you think of living in Luxembourg?”

While writing this book, my biggest struggle was how to address the events of THE EXPATS, my first novel, which features some of these same characters at an earlier point in their lives. I eventually decided to include only what’s absolutely necessary for this story, treating PARIS as if the book of EXPATS doesn’t exist but its action does, in the backstory of these characters’ lives, just like the characters’ back stories in any novels. Like this passage.

But recent events suggest an institutional failure of epic proportions.

Some people used to be certain that the world was flat. That the sun revolved around the earth. That kings ruled by divine right, that human slavery was beneficial to everyone, that twelve was the ideal age to bear children, that you beat your wife—of course you did—when she misbehaved. And these days many people are certain that the U.S.’s particular expression of representative democracy is the best possible political order in the history of the world. We’ve been wrong about important things before; we will be wrong again. And I think there’s ample evidence that we’re wrong right now.

But the dog is now wagging his tail, thrilled with all this attention from strangers, normally the morning walks are so uneventful, we just go get the newspaper and then return to the apartment, plop down at the door and wait for something fun to happen, maybe today is cleaning-lady day.

Yes: this really is from the point of view of a Parisian springer spaniel. You’re welcome!

a tennis club whose logo is a kneeling rifleman,

I used to belong to this tennis club. I lost my hat.

In that dark apartment in Paris, laptop in lap, he cried like a baby,

We are all someone’s child, or someone’s parent, or both. So is every character in this novel, the good guys and bad guys alike, and everyone in between: all of them doing what they think they must for their families.

“Just a precaution.”

Hunter’s predicament occurred to me years before I had the idea for THE PARIS DIVERSION, as the central event to a completely different book that I never got around to writing. I’d relegated the idea to some back burner of my imagination until it rushed back into my consciousness when I was in Paris a few years ago, but now I saw it not as the crux of the story, but as one large piece of a much bigger puzzle. I’m glad I didn’t get around to writing that other novel; this one is much better.

Jake now corrects Kate’s pronunciation—“No, Mommy, it’s rrhhhobbb-eh,” a guttural r sound from deep in his throat, a noise that Kate will never be able to get quite right.

This line of dialogue happened about a decade ago, in Luxembourg, a five-year-old kid of ours telling my wife what’s what.

This living room is huge, with three different seating areas, two fireplaces, French doors to a balcony perched over the campo, half-shaded at this hour by the low angle of the sun.

We rented this apartment for a few nights, in a corner of the Campo San Polo.

He also keeps a couple of Krugerrands in his wallet, always.

I have an old friend who keeps one of these coins in his wallet, for this purpose. This is also a guy who occasionally asks a maître d’ to safeguard his cell phone so we can dine in the relative comfort of knowing that the device isn’t eavesdropping on our conversation.

There is no way to make people safe everywhere. The only thing you can do is make them feel safe, with the metal detectors, the security guards, snipers, enabling everyone to go about their lives believing that every precaution has been taken.

In 2001, one insane incompetent man on one flight tried to detonate one shoe bomb, and failed. In nearly two decades since, there have been more than 500 million commercial flights carrying tens of billions of passengers, and not a single person ever in the history of humanity has even been injured, much less died, due to a shoe bomb on an airplane. Literally every other cause of death is more common. So why do we still take off our shoes to get through American airports?

Born on third base, believing he hit a triple.

I wish I could take credit for this analogy—I can’t—because it occurs to me on an almost daily basis. New York is unfortunately filled with men like this, and when I eventually flee from my hometown, it’ll probably because I can no longer stomach them.

TRAVELERS INTERNATIONAL BOOKING SERVICE

This service, and the Inez character whom you’ll meet in a few pages, play important roles in my third novel, THE TRAVELERS.

Evil, in his experience, is a temporary subjective condition, not a permanent objective fact.

This is one of the underlying principles of my novels (in fact it’s one my fundamental beliefs), and it’s how I construct characters and the tensions between them. Not because some are good and others are evil, but because people find themselves thrust into conflict with one another.

of that unqualified unprepared irresponsible lunatic as president, a man who’s capable of Lord knows what irrational behavior that could produce life-threatening conditions at any given moment, anywhere in the world.

How do you continue to follow orders when the person giving them is clearly making bad choices, to the detriment of possibly everyone in the world? This is a tremendous moral dilemma.

never even realizing that he is already dead.

There’s a passage (or two) in each of my novels that made me cry when I wrote it. Here’s THE PARIS DIVERSION's.

After weeks of rain and gray and increasingly hostile chill, today was an autumnal jewel, a reprieve that everyone knows will be brief, and the warm weather has drawn out not only throngs of tourists but also flocks of locals, it looks like everyone in Paris has arrived in a good mood at a surprise party, Kate cycles by young and old and everyone between, the cafés are all full, people packed onto the terraces, making conversation with strangers and neighbors, making out in corners, holding hands across tables filled with glasses of wine and bottles of beer, bowls of peanuts and ashtrays overflowing and half-eaten slices of tarte tatin, it’s still early enough that children are everywhere, playing on sidewalks and in the park, running and jumping and joyous noise, chasing balls and dogs and that final bit of fun before the unseen clock expires, and suddenly you’re called to come here, to go home, to go to bed, kids know this better than anyone, that you have to do it all right now, everything, because this can always happen without any warning whatsoever: you’re out of time.

Each of my novels ends with one long sentence that’s a short story in its own right, a passage that concludes the book’s action and themes while opening up the hint—the possibility—of a new story. I hope you enjoyed PARIS, and if you want to read more about Kate and these other characters—if you want to know everything that happened in Luxembourg—that’s what THE EXPATS is.